I know conferences are expensive to run, but what is the point of holding it all if the cost effectively stops the vast majority of professionals the organisation is supposed to represent from attending? 👀 @cilip.bsky.social I’m looking at you among others… - ThreadSky

heroicendeavour.bsky.social • 48 days ago

I know conferences are expensive to run, but what is the point of holding it all if the cost effectively stops the vast majority of professionals the organisation is supposed to represent from attending? 👀 @cilip.bsky.social I’m looking at you among others…

Comments

aliceponderland.bsky.social•48 days ago

I hadn’t realised the £899 was the early bird price… I don’t know who is going to be able to go to that!

meganeve.bsky.social•48 days ago

Well new professionals get a wonderful deal at £749. My new oven cost less!

siobhanh.bsky.social•47 days ago

... That's more than a month's rent?!

heroicendeavour.bsky.social•48 days ago

People way way above our pay grade!

unabridgedopinions.com•48 days ago

That’s right up there with AdvanceHE which is soooo expensive! (And also overwhelmingly big)

cathryneap.bsky.social•47 days ago

I'm a UHMLG committee member and we try and keep costs down for our in person event. £250 for last year's conference and it always includes accommodation and meals in ticket price. Aware we're a bit niche though (university health librarians)

thatdocphoenix.com•48 days ago

It’s always been a weird mixture of heads of service and then very new professionals and students volunteering or on bursaries

brynolf.bsky.social•46 days ago

I’m currently self-employed so my conference budget is zero…

uklibrariesnag.bsky.social•48 days ago

Cost is a large reason we've gone to single day Seminars which are slightly easier for people to fund... We're also trying to move about a bit so despite the largest concentration of members being in London, we're coming up to Leeds this May to give Northern members with low budgets a chance.

uklibrariesnag.bsky.social•48 days ago

The NAG public library Forum tickets for members are also actually below the cost price and are subsidised by NAG in an effort to make attendance possible for people.

heroicendeavour.bsky.social•48 days ago

And that’s very admirable and deserves a round of applause and to be acknowledged. 👏

siobhanh.bsky.social•48 days ago

Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I thought that most of those are aimed at senior-senior staff, specific orgs etc. and that the cost is part of ensuring the correct audience attends?

I assumed (incorrectly) there was no way organisers didn't know most orgs have limited/no event budget?

siobhanh.bsky.social•48 days ago

Not being funny, but anything you see me attending this year that doesn't have subsidised attendance/travel *I* am paying for, and I know that similar is the case for many people who aren't senior leadership / at a large org.

(Man do I miss Leeds' staff development budget these days 😭)

heroicendeavour.bsky.social•48 days ago

Same. I think I’m likely to attend two conferences this year, and both will be because I’m a speaker and attendance is being covered by the conference. Pretty sure my days of being able to ‘just’ attend a conference for my own development purposes are long gone.

uklibrariesnag.bsky.social•48 days ago

If anyone is looking for alternatives, our Call for Papers for Seminar/Forum in Leeds this May is still open and we cover a free place plus travel expenses (inc hotel night before if needed) for speakers:
https://nag.org.uk/cfp25/
(deadline 2nd Feb)

uklibrariesnag.bsky.social•48 days ago

And I will say all of this is possible thanks to our wonderful commercial Sponsors who keep the events affordable! Our Gold Sponsors this year are Browns Books and we're delighted to have them on board.

heroicendeavour.bsky.social•48 days ago

And even there I have to swallow my tongue because a lot of library conference sponsors (not Browns) are the very same corporations sucking us dry via subscription prices that have less us with such depleted budgets!

siobhanh.bsky.social•48 days ago

I was looking at it earlier today, since I live around the corner 😄

uklibrariesnag.bsky.social•48 days ago

Got to love a local speaker from the travel expenses perspective... :-)

siobhanh.bsky.social•48 days ago

One of them is covered, the other I am just accepting 'it do be like that' - but there are some specific bits I want out of it that will hopefully help me in the long run.

I don't like that development in libraries - once you get past the first hurdle - often seems to come at high costs...

siobhanh.bsky.social•48 days ago

(Dont get me wrong, I quite like conferences and presenting - but I have had a lot of practice / education for exactly that. But it seems unfair there are limited other ways. Not blaming the more reasonably priced larger conferences, but still. Yuck.)

heroicendeavour.bsky.social•48 days ago

It may well be so, but in that case the organisation really isn’t representing the bulk of its members, or making any pretence of doing so, not without laying on additional events that are aimed at the bulk of the workforce and priced accordingly.

siobhanh.bsky.social•48 days ago

Oh yeah, I agree it's all a bit suspicious. I've always wondered to myself why they don't just have a more 'closed' fancy dinner that they do based on invites and be done with it. Feels more honest to me, but who am I 🤷‍♀️ It's the pretence that almost irks me most.

heroicendeavour.bsky.social•48 days ago

And if institutions don’t have the money for staff development budgets for staff but DO have the money to send senior staff to these kinds of events, well. Then there are words I could say that are not polite or politic for a public forum. 🤬

heroicendeavour.bsky.social•48 days ago

Otherwise it just becomes a schmoozing event for organisation officers, paid/invited speakers, senior sector figures, and corporate bods and sponsors, subsidised by the dues of the members who can’t afford to attend.

heroicendeavour.bsky.social•48 days ago

Conferences like CALC have shown that you 100% absolutely positively can run hugely valuable and rewarding conferences on next to no budget, so I’m not sure what the excuse is.

I think @patchedelbows.bsky.social and @michelleab.bsky.social need to run a conference on how to run a conference!

heroicendeavour.bsky.social•48 days ago

I’ve always been very aware that as an a academic librarian I’ve had opportunities to attend conferences that would have been open to me as a public, school or FE librarian, but even HE staff development budgets are shrinking or non-existent these days. So who are these library conferences for?

selinalock.bsky.social•47 days ago

Yeah, shrinking & nonexistent budgets abound.

Been years since I went to an in person conference as disability #mecfs means I struggle to travel or attend full day events.

Liked the half-day free events we used to run in the East Midlands Research Support group, before we disbanded.

gingergalwales.bsky.social•48 days ago

I organised a conference last year, and we had sponsors, which meant we were able to make the conference affordable. We also didn't charge speakers as we felt that recognised the work they put in to speak at the conference. We also offered bursaries to those would not normally get the opportunity.

littlebutfierce.bsky.social•48 days ago

It’s tricky as moving events online is way more financially accessible…but limits networking: as someone who joined HE libraries late 2019, it took forever for me to build a network of colleagues as covid = no in person events.

patchedelbows.bsky.social•47 days ago

Me and @michelleab.bsky.social have discussed this issue w/ online confs.
We had thoughts about folks having locally-organised viewing-type get togethers for the conference so folks could meet, share food etc. Might be tricky for CALC though as it's a but niche so ppl are far apart.

heroicendeavour.bsky.social•47 days ago

And the fact that critical approaches to libraries should be considered ‘niche’ makes me weep and realise how much work we have to do!

heroicendeavour.bsky.social•47 days ago

A sort of centrally-themed but locally-organised library camp type thing?

michelleab.bsky.social•46 days ago

We have discussed doing a CALC library camp...

jaffne.bsky.social•46 days ago

Ah, the good old days of library camp, when any and every topic was valid. I wanted to to a mistakes conference, where we'd all be able to talk about how projects/plans can/do go wrong but orgs would never fund attendance to learn about failing, & some would prob ban telling about their failures.

avwoman.bsky.social•46 days ago

michelleab.bsky.social•46 days ago

Yes! They really went hard for a while and then just...disappeared? A mistakes conference would be ace. Didn't Emma Coonan once do a keynote about mistakes/ failures?

littlebutfierce.bsky.social•47 days ago

That sounds lovely! I also really like the ALN model of one online, one in person day where booking one and not the other is acceptable: feels like it treads the middle ground of both options nicely.

littlebutfierce.bsky.social•48 days ago

Then again, if I’m pushing for attending conferences it’s never the pricey ones: it’s so hard to justify to work that amount of money being worth it

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